Friday, April 23, 2010

Ordination of Clelia Garrity to the Diaconate

St. Martin’s Church, Pahrump, NV
Ordination to the Sacred Order of Deacons - Clelia Garrity
Jeremiah 1:4-9; 2 Corinthians 4:1-6; Luke 12:35-38 (Propers for the Ordination of a Deacon)
Preacher; The Reverend William H. Stokes

How privileged I feel to be here and to be your preacher on this extraordinary occasion, when, in a short while, by God’s grace and with your consent, Clelia Garrity will be ordained a deacon in Christ’s one holy catholic and apostolic church. I think this day has been a long time coming. I know Clelia feels that way too.
I’ve known Clelia for nearly fifteen years and have been her spiritual director throughout this process. I can assure you she has been waiting for this moment, longing for it. For her, it is a time of fulfillment, a time for her to fulfill that which she feels to the depths of her soul. Clelia is a deacon through and through and through. She has a deacon’s heart!
Today we are giving outward expression to an inward reality which is already present; which God has planted with the soul of Clelia Garrity. That’s what a sacrament is: giving outward and visible expression to an inward invisible reality. Ordination is a sacrament.
God has given Clelia a heart of compassion. Not the kind of compassion that feels only and then doesn’t act, that is “enabling” rather than “empowering.” Oh, no, Clelia Garrity’s compassion is active compassion. Clelia sees, and Clelia does.
Clelia has served, and continues to serve, people most in need and in most desperate circumstances: the poor, the battered and the abused, and especially battered and abused children, the most vulnerable ones. She has been performing this kind of service most of her adult her....Yes, God has given Clelia the heart of a servant...God has given Clelia the heart of a Deacon.
Today, we have a holy and sacred responsibility: With our consent, by our prayers, and with Bishop Dan’s actions of laying his hands on Clelia and petitioning the Holy Spirit, by the power of that same Spirit, the outward expression will meet with the inward reality and the deed will be accomplished. We will have a new Deacon – Deacon Clelia Garrity.
Prior to responding to my own call to the priesthood (and it needs to be noted that all priests are first ordained as deacons, although there is a healthy conversation going on in the church today about whether or not we should continue this), I worked for many years in restaurants both as a bartender and a waiter. I started doing this because my wife and I had married young, very young; when I was a freshman in college. Working in restaurants allowed me to work at night and go to school during the day. I kept that up for two years. Then restaurants took over and I dropped out of college and started running restaurants. I did pretty well, running some pretty big places, mostly in New York.
After eight years of that, I got restless. I was working 6 and 7 days a week, often from 9 or 10 in the morning until 2 0r 3 the next morning. I’d go home, sleep for a few hours, get up and do it again. I had a family, including small children....What’s this about? I began to wonder to myself. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the Spirit was stirring in me. I began to sense a call to the priesthood.
Eventually I responded to that call and went back and finished college and then went to seminary. I stopped running restaurants, but I still had to work, I had children to support. I started waiting tables again. I waited tables through the first year and a half of seminary.
In 1987, during my first year at General Seminary, where one of my classmates was Bishop Dan Edwards, we were required to take a course in church history called Patristics....Patristics studies the earliest history of the church; from the time immediately following the Resurrection of Jesus and the church of the first Apostles to about the 6th century. One of the first lectures of the course was on the early development of the church’s ordained ministry, the order of deacons. “The word deacon,” Professor Bob Wright said in class that day, “comes from the Greek word DIACONOS which means ‘servant’ or more specifically `humble table servant’ or ‘waiter.’”
I cannot describe to you, how overwhelmed I was at hearing that in that classroom...As I indicated, at the time, I was still waiting tables in a restaurant in New York... “The word deacon,” Professor Bob Wright said, “comes from the Greek word DIACONOS which means `servant’ `humble table servant’ or ‘waiter.’”
Yes, it was overwhelming to hear that. I was at a totally new place in my life and in my understanding...I was in a totally new place in my relationship with God but, I had come full circle. I knew what those words meant. I was entering a new servanthood, a new form of humble table service. Tears came to my eyes and I could barely hear the rest of the lecture. It was as if God had spoken to me; had affirmed my call.
Today we are gathered to ordain another person into the ranks of God’s humble table servants, God’s waiters....Another person, Clelia Garrity, has by the grace of God in her own distinct way come full circle in her life. She, too, has felt the stirring of the Spirit, which made her restless, unsettled her....And she has, in response the Spirit’s urging, presented herself to the Church; jumped through all its hoops and been found worthy to enter its servant ranks. So we rejoice in that and give thanks for it, even as we recognize the solemnity of the occasion and grapple with its implications.
In one of his Epistles, St. Clement of Rome, an early Church Father (who dates to about. 95 AD), states that the institution of deacons along with that of bishops “is the work of the Apostles themselves.”1 Therefore, the ordination which takes place today, and the ministry which we celebrate, reaches back to the very earliest life of the church. Wow!
In its earliest expressions the diaconate was clear and well-defined. There were seven deacons in Rome and in each of the large cities of the church. In a thorough treatment of the subject, the Catholic Encyclopedia tells us that deacons were responsible for oversight of church funds and for the distribution of alms to the poor, the widows and the orphans....Deacons were responsible for seeking out the sick and the needy and reporting to the bishop and representing to the bishop both their condition and their necessities...They were responsible for inviting the elderly women of the church community to the Agape meal. 2
Deacons were “the guardians of order in the church.” 3 They saw that the faithful occupied their proper places, that “none gossiped or slept...They were to welcome the poor and aged and to take care that they were not at a disadvantage as to their position in the church.”4...As St. Chrysostom says in general terms: “if anyone misbehave let the deacon be summoned.” 5 I like that!
Besides all this, Deacons, “.were largely employed in the direct ministry of the altar, preparing the sacred vessels and bringing water for the ablutions....”6 Deacons read the Gospel, led the prayers of the people, and dismissed them into the world at the end of the mass...7
There are a number of other qualities of this ministry from early days, and, although they had receded into the background for many hundreds of years, the ministry of the deacon has re-surged, both in the Roman Church, and particularly in the Episcopal Church...
The Book of Common Prayer captures the essentials of this ministry, its implications and its tensions in the Examination which we shall soon hear. The Bishop will state to Clelia, “As a deacon....You are to make Christ and his redemptive love known, by your word and example, to those among whom you live, and work, and worship. You are to interpret to the Church the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world. You are to assist the bishops and priests in public worship and in the ministration of God’s Word and Sacraments, and you are to carry out other duties assigned to you from time to time. At, all times, your life and teaching are to show Christ’s people that in serving the helpless, they are serving Christ himself....” 8 Servanthood is that the heart of the diaconal ministry....In fact, servanthood is at the core of all Christian ministry.
Were you paying attention to the Gospel reading when it was read? Did it shock you? It should have. It certainly would have shocked those who heard it when Jesus spoke those words...

Jesus is speaking to a crowd....He had already been engaged in a somewhat hostile exchange with scribes and Pharisees who are lying in wait, ready to pounce on anything he says which might give them an excuse to have him arrested (cf. Luke 11:53).
Those scribes and Pharisees knew about power and privilege....They were the cream of their society....They kept the law and observed every propriety....They also knew who was who in their society. They were at the top of the social rung; everybody else, well, they should be kept in their place.....
Jesus addresses the crowd and urges them to be ready for the time when the master of the House will come (Luke 12:26) Apparently, in this short teaching, the master has been attending a wedding banquet, it’s an image for the messianic banquet, the consummation of time, when the righteous will be judged favorably and enter into the master’s heaven and when the wicked will be judged negatively and cast into the place of eternal separation from God....
“Be dressed, “ Jesus says to his listeners... “Be dressed and ready for action. Have your lamps lit....Be like those who are waiting for the Master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks” (Luke 12:35 - 36).
Now listen to this. Listen carefully! Listen to what Jesus says next, “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves! (Luke 12:37-38). The master of the house will come and fasten his belt, and then have them sit down to eat, and HE will serve them?! It’s unbelievable! It’s absurd!
But that’s what the ministry and Gospel message of Jesus is: unbelievable, outrageous, absurd! It turns the world upside down....It turns the world’s calculus and power structures upside down. The rich are poor and the poor are rich....The blind receive their sight and the lame are healed....The captives are set free, the oppressed are limited....And masters wait tables and serve the servants....
In his book Living Jesus, Luke Timothy Johnson writes, “The claim to be learning Jesus is superficial if not grounded in specific practices that embody such learning. The pattern of faithful obedience and loving service is not something to be memorized as though it were a mental image. Rather, it is a pattern that must be spelled out in the practices of living faith within a community...The pattern by which we were imprinted by baptism – the pattern of a dying and rising Lord Jesus....We need to translate this pattern into consistent habits of behavior that express the mind of Christ.” 9
Johnson continues, “We shall not be able to learn Jesus in the sick and imprisoned unless we visit those who are sick and imprisoned. We shall not find Jesus in the hungry and thirsty unless we go to those who are hungry with food and to those who are thirsty with drink. We shall not meet Jesus in the stranger unless we provide the stranger with hospitality...”10
Johnson is right and his description addresses what should be the ministry of all the baptized. But his words and images point with special particularity, I believe, to the ministry of the deacon as that ministry is understood in the Book of Common Prayer and as that ministry has been handed down to us through th ages in the church: a ministry, a radical ministry, to which Clelia is now called and into which she is now to be ordained...She has the heart for it....She has a deacons heart through and through....

Charge to Clelia
Clelia, God has led you on an extraordinary journey and now calls you into an extraordinary ministry of service...I know you...I know you well....I give thanks for this day and for God’s call to you...I think it has been a long time coming....I am thankful for the privilege of sharing with you in this call....You know about power and privilege and celebrity and the all the superficialities and artificial categories of value that mark the world in which we live....You have lived among them....
You have also recognized the needs of the world and dedicated yourself as a layperson and social worker to responding to those needs....Christ now calls you into deeper servanthood and deeper love....On behalf of God’s people, I now charge you to continue to grow in Christ’s love and service and to grow in your servant ministry as a deacon....Continue to break boundaries, to journey to places of discomfort and pain, to journey to places which challenge your own comfort level and perhaps even threaten your own self-understanding...Go to those places...Go to those places because you are needed there...Go to those places because Christ is needed there...Let those who see you, see, experience Christ, through you and in you...Let his words resound through your ministry, “I am among you as one who serves.”

Charge to the People

It is customary for the preacher at an ordination service to charge the ordinand and I have just done this...But it is important that we all be charged....Clelia is about to be ordained to the servant ministry of Deacon, but we should recognize that her particular ministry is a specific expression of the servant ministry we all share by virtue of our baptism...We have promised that we will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves...In this promise, we indicate our share in the diaconate. I charge you all therefore, not only to support Clelia in her diaconal ministry, but to remember that we you are all called to represent the reconciling love of Christ and his church wherever you may: in the home, at work, in school, at play, in service. The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ....May Christ give you strength and grace to be willing and obedient servants in that restoration work...May God bless and keep you always in his heart and love...Amen

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Feed My Sheep...Follow me.

Sermon
Feed My Sheep…Follow Me
April 18, 2010

“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him “Feed my sheep.”…After this he said to him, “Follow me.” John 21:15-19

“Feed my lambs;” Tend my sheep;” “Feed my sheep;” “Follow me.” These are Jesus’ words to Peter, today. They are words that form commands; words that confer responsibility; words that imply trust; words foundational to the Christian Church.

They are commands that charge one to go forth in love and faith, both following Jesus and caring for the Christian community at the very same time.

Most certainly, these are commands that would normally be saved for only the most trusted friend or family member.

Yet, wait a minute…wasn’t Peter the disciple who just a few days earlier, during Jesus’ arrest and trial in Jerusalem, denied him twice by saying, “No, I am not one if his disciples,” and then a third time by saying, “No, I was not in the garden with him.”

Wasn’t Peter the disciple who could have come forward and defended Jesus, but didn’t, instead choosing to lurk in the shadows and escape responsibility? Wasn’t Peter the disciple who avoided offering the support that should have been given by one of Jesus’ followers; one of his trusted disciples?

Can it be that Peter – the Peter who denied; the Peter who avoided responsibility; the Peter who lost his way - who has now been chosen by Jesus to lead in his place; to, “Tend my sheep, and follow me?”
How are we to interpret this sudden and complete trust in someone who has just performed cowardly acts of betrayal and untrustworthiness? Someone who had just demonstrated blatant acts unfaithfulness?

We might wonder why Jesus didn’t instead choose John for this role of leadership. At first glance, John seems to be the perfect choice. He was, after all, Jesus’ favorite apostle.
It was John, not Peter, who stood by the foot of the cross as Jesus died, ignoring the danger of being arrested and put to death by the Romans. It was John, not Peter, whom Jesus chose to act as guardian of his mother Mary. It was John, not Peter, who had been the perfect disciple; the ever faithful friend; the dependable one. It seems impossible to imagine a more appropriate choice than John for Jesus to choose to lead his Church.
So why did Jesus choose Peter and not John? Did Jesus know something we do not? I think so – I think that while John was the “perfect” disciple; the disciple who did everything right with unfailing loyalty, Jesus knew that we are all Peter. We are not perfect. We all have moments of weakness; times of doubt; periods of our lives that are not so pretty perfect. We all lose our way – every single one of us. No one of us is perfect. And therefore, because no one could live up to John’s example of perfection, Jesus chose Peter.
Jesus does not expect us to be perfect.
Jesus knew that Peter would rebound from his fall and become the strong, natural leader he was. Jesus knew that by choosing Peter, he gave hope to the thousands of generations that would follow…. It’s as if Jesus is telling us, “I do not call you to be perfect. Do not fear falling, or failing, follow me and you will rebound. All I ask is that you have faith and follow me.”
In today’s passage, Jesus also tells Peter, “When you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.”
Here, Jesus is warning Peter that his newly assigned task of leading the infant Christian Church will be not be an easy one. It will require courage, endurance, and the strength to face a painful death for the sake of the Church; for Jesus’ sake.
Having been given his charge by Jesus, Peter initially worked to establish the early Church by preaching to the scattered Jews and Hebrew Christians in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia. Several years later, Peter went to Rome where he quickly became the leader of the Christian movement, and a favorite of the Emperor Nero.
However, Peter, and the tenacity with which he carried forth his mission to follow Jesus by spreading the Good News and creating a Christian community, soon became a threat to the powerful Roman ruler. Nero decided that he needed to eliminate Peter, and the Christian Church, as well.
Church history says that Peter probably died by crucifixion, with his head to the ground and his arms outstretched, shortly after the Great Fire of Rome in the year 64. A fire that Nero himself set in an effort to discredit the Christians.
Margherita Guarducci, who between 1963 and 1968 led the last stages of the research leading to the rediscovery of Peter’s tomb, concludes that Peter died on October 13 A.D. 64 on the occasion of the 10th dies imperii (coronation day anniversary) of Emperor Nero. The dies imperii was always accompanied by much bloodshed – gladiators, chariot rides – all of the Charlton Heston blood and gore that we’ve seen in movies like The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur.
It was on this bloody 10th anniversary day that Roman authorities sentenced Peter to death by crucifixion amidst all the rest of the bloodshed that was occurring around him. Peter’s burial place is thought to be where the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome was later built, directly beneath the Basilica's high altar.
Today, we hear that Jesus charged Peter. Jesus charged Peter to feed his sheep and to follow him. Jesus charged Peter with the task of taking the Good News into the world fearlessly, with love, courage, and faith, knowing that his Lord would always be there to guide, support, and forgive him.
Is Jesus’ charge for Peter only? No – Jesus charges us all. He charges us through our Baptismal Covenant; he charges us through the various “calls” that we receive in his name; he charges us in and through the ministry of the lay and the ordained to feed his sheep and to follow him.
Just last Saturday, I was charged by Bishop Dan to “study the Holy Scriptures, to seek nourishment from them, and to model [my] life upon them”. I was charged “to interpret to the Church the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world.” I was charged “to serve all people, particularly the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely.”
Several years ago when Julie was ordained, she was charged “to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” She was charged “to preach, to declare God’s forgiveness to penitent sinners, to pronounce God’s blessing, to share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the mysteries of Christ’s Body and Blood, and to perform the other ministrations entrusted to [her].”
When Bishop Dan was ordained, he was charged “to guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church; to celebrate and to provide for the administration of the sacraments of the New Covenant; to ordain priests and deacons and to join in ordaining bishops; and to be in all things a faithful pastor and wholesome example for the entire flock of Christ.”
You, the laity, are charged “to represent Christ and his church; to bear witness to him wherever you may be; and according to the gift given to you, to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world; and to take your place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church.”
Jesus has charged us all – laity, deacon, priest, and bishop. We have all been assigned a job and clearly instructed as to how to carry out that job. We have all been charged to feed Christ’s sheep and to follow him. Like Peter, we will deny, we will avoid responsibility, we will become lost. Jesus knew that would happen; but, he trusted that, as with Peter, and like lost sheep, we would, with the power of the Holy Spirit to guide us, once again find our way.
Last week, after my consecration as a deacon in the Episcopal Church, Bishop Dan, as is customary, presented me with a bible. His inscription in this bible reads, “May the Lord who has given you the will to do these things, give you the grace and power to perform them.”
This was Jesus’ wish for Peter; it is Jesus’ wish for you; it is my prayer for you.

Friday, April 2, 2010

A Letter from The Rev. Lauren Stanley

Dear Friends in Christ:

In Haiti's epicenter, anywhere you walk, you are walking in death.

Everywhere you step in earthquake-devastated epicenter of Port au Prince and Leogane and the surrounding areas, your feet get dirty. There are few open spaces left, and what once was open is now filled with tents and tent cities. There is little sanitation. Garbage is picked up some days, but piles up most others. The rains sweep everything down the streets and sidewalks: raw sewage, mud from the crumbled buildings, the decaying remains of those who died and who have still not been found, still not been uncovered in the rubble.

If any one group of people need their feet washed, especially on Maundy Thursday, it is the Haitians, for they walk in death every single day.

But foot-washing -- a part of the Christian tradition that comes from the Evangelist John's description of the Last Supper, in which Jesus washed the feet of his disciples -- is not a tradition in the Episcopal Church here. I'm not certain why it isn't, I simply know that when I asked, "Do we wash the people's feet here?" I was told, "No."

I wish that were not so, because right now, Haitians need that foot-washing.

Not just because they are walking in death.

But because I think that most Haitians - those living in tents and tent cities, and those who are in their own homes - need the rest of the world to bathe them in the same love in which Jesus bathed his disciples' feet.

The standard explanation of the foot-washing scene in John's Gospel is that Jesus wanted to show how far he was willing to go to be a servant to his disciples, to set an example for them, so that they in turn might be servants as well.

But I have always believed that there is so much more to the story than simply example-setting. I believe that Jesus got on his knees and washed his disciples dirty, smelly, probably ugly feet -- that terribly despised portion of the body that most people really don't want to have washed in public -- I believe Jesus did this as an act of pure love. I believe Jesus took each foot and caressed it, rubbed it, washed it clean, and gently rubbed it dry out of pure love.

And if anyone needs to experience that kind of gentle love, it is the Haitians. They have suffered so much for so long, and then have been torn asunder physically, emotionally and psychologically by this earthquake. Now, the very ground on which they walk is filled with death. What would it be like, I asked the small congregation gathered for Maundy Thursday services at St. James the Just, if we were to have OUR feet washed, and then were to go across the street to the Tent City where approximately 6,000 people are encamped, and wash THEIR feet? What would happen if we were to show to all those in such great need the same absolute, tender love that Jesus showed to his disciples?

We don't do foot-washing in Haiti -- at least, not yet. Pere David Cesar and I talked about possibly introducing the service next year.

But right now, I said, I think it's something that Haiti desperately needs: Gentle, tender, pure love. Each of us, I said, needs to take the love of Christ that we feel -- however big or small -- and share it, gently and tenderly -- with those who need it so much more.

When Jesus got down on his knees, I said, he did it out of love. And that very act alone changed the world.

We, too, I said, can do this. We can get on OUR knees, figuratively and literally, and in doing so change not just Haiti, but the world.

I don't want to walk in death any more. The Haitians don't want to walk in death any more. What they want -- what they NEED, right now -- is to walk in love.

What better way to show that love than to have our dirty, smelly, ugly feet washed, and then to wash the dirty, smelly, ugly feet of others?

That kind of love, that kind of willingness to lessen ourselves so that others may be loved and may find life -- THAT kind of love changed the world once, and it can change the world again.

I really wanted to wash some feet tonight, and I wanted my own feet washed, in the pure, tender, gentle love of Jesus. We did so figuratively. Hopefully soon, we'll do so literally as well.

Blessings and peace in this Holy Week,
Lauren


The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley
TEC Appointed Missionary in Haiti
Assistant to Bishop Duracin,
Partnership Program and Development
Diocese of Haiti
US mobile: 703-678-3892
Haitian mobile: 011 509 3865 8329
MereLaurenS@gmail.com
http://GoIntoTheWorld.net